Interesting Groups

[JimD]

I got a small pellet order from Utah Air this afternoon so I had to shoot a few. Cell 7 is my P35X and not the real intended subject. The group on the left of cell 7 is FX 25.4s and the bigger group on the right is H&N FTTs. The FX is a better but still not a very good 30 yard group. This gun has progressed from not shooting at all to shooting good enough for plinking but it may not be capable of going further.

Mainly I was comparing pellets in my 22 caliber Bullshark. Cell 8 is two five shot groups. The group on the left might need to include a shot that went much higher in the upper left of the cell. If the circled area it as really good for Crosman HPs. The cell on the right is a below average group for Crosman HP in this gun. Cell 10 is also Crosman HPs from the same tin but they have been sorted by weight and head size. The group on the right has larger head sizes than the group on the left. They are all 14.3 or 14.4 grains and were going around 925 fps.

Cell 9 is the new pellets. On the left are FX 18.1s. I expected them to shoot well because JSB 18.1s shoot well in this gun. They did. The group on the right is AEA 18.3s. They shot at least as well and if one had been a little more to the right it would have been a great group. Both these shoot well and I will need to shoot more of them to decide which shoots best in this gun. They were straight from the tin. The AEA tin is interesting, it is a screw together tin like a H&N but has foam on the top and bottom of the pellets like JSB does. The pellets look good as well as shoot good. These pellets were going about 825 fps.

Cell 11 is H&N Baracuda 18s. I've shot them before in this gun and decided the JSBs shot a little better. This group seems consistent with that conclusion. The Baracudas were going 5-10 fps faster than the FX and AEA pellets.

The only bad thing about this information is I probably need to sort some more Crosman HPs. I will loose a lot of them by rejecting the smaller head sizes but it seems like I need to for them to shoot the best they can. But I may just leave them unsorted and continue to consider them my plinking pellets. My previous tests indicate domed shoot better for me in this gun and weighing and head sizing them I can see they are also more consistent. All the domed I have are old US made pellets.

I did not clean the gun or even fire any "leading" shots between groups as I switched.

 

[rdtricks]

Actually, most of your groups are not that bad for 30 yrds. I shoot at 30 meters and find it a good challenge if I am not paying attention and doing my part. Are you just testing pellet accuracy, tuning your rifles, or somthing in between? Going between a 25.4 gr pellet and a 14.66 gr pellet as you did with the P35X will probably result in very similar outcomes to what you got from most rifles. That is a huge swing in weight, velocity, and trajectory. On the P35X, have you polished the barrel yet? Most Chinese barrels are good but a bit rough from the manufacturers. For what it's worth, I have started to size my pellets with a simple push through unit for a better consistancy in size.

 

[Normkel]

Actually, most of your groups are not that bad for 30 yrds. I shoot at 30 meters and find it a good challenge if I am not paying attention and doing my part. Are you just testing pellet accuracy, tuning your rifles, or somthing in between? Going between a 25.4 gr pellet and a 14.66 gr pellet as you did with the P35X will probably result in very similar outcomes to what you got from most rifles. That is a huge swing in weight, velocity, and trajectory. On the P35X, have you polished the barrel yet? Most Chinese barrels are good but a bit rough from the manufacturers. For what it's worth, I have started to size my pellets with a simple push through unit for a better consistancy in size.

I weigh to 1/10 grain increments which seems to reduce the number of flyers.

I have a 5.52 sizer (die and pusher) that was given to me but haven't found that sizing to that size has helped my two Streamlines. It has been quite some time, and we usually fight wind at our range, so should revisit the sizing. When I have purchased specifically sized batches, the results have been inconclusive.

As must be evident, I am still going around on these questions, despite that some are convinced.

 

[JimD]

I sorted the Crosman HPs this afternoon. In one tin I have 14.3 and 14.4 pellets with head size 4.54 through 4.58. In the other tin I have lighter and heavier pellets and smaller and bigger head size pellets. I'd rather sort head size tighter than this but the variability of this tin of Crosmans is pretty high. There are a few more pellets in the 14.3/14.4 large head size tin but it's pretty close.

It was a bit windy here today, I'm hoping for lower wind to do some more testing. Most of the variability in the larger head size Crosman group is windage so they might tighten up in low wind. I am pretty sure the FX and AEA will still be better, however. It's quite a bit of work to sort a 500 pellet tin but it's nice to shoot pellets costing less than 2 cents a shot. But if I have to relegate almost half of them to plinking then they aren't as inexpensive.